French cities to scoop €13.5 million from Airbnb ‘tourist tax’

(thelocal)– Airbnb plans to pay €13.5 million in tourist taxes to cities across France, with the capital Paris getting the lion’s share at nearly €7 million, the home-sharing app said.

Airbnb began automatically collecting tourist tax, or taxe de séjour in French, when guests made a booking in 2015 in Paris and the Alpine resort of Chamonix, and then extended the measure to 19 French towns and cities in 2016, and to a total of 50 last year.

Airbnb said in a statement that it planned to hand over the €13.5 million it collected last year to local authorities by the end of the week.

It said it plans to extend the measure to 1,500 localities across the country in 2018.

Its figures said that Paris would this week be given €6.9 million, Nice €860,000 , and Marseille a total of €790,000.